Warder Cresson was born to a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 13, 1798. Warder's family members were successful aristocrats and entrepreneurs who owned prime real estate on Chestnut Street in the center of Philadelphia, as well as farmland in the countryside. When he was 17, Warder wnet to work on the family farms. Within a few years, he became the head of a very successful farming enterprise.
Yet Warder had interests byond agriculture and finances. In 1827, he began to publicly question some of the fundamental tenets of Quakerism, and he did so in writing, in first religious tract, "A Humble and Affectionate Address to the Select Members of the Abington Quarterly Meeting," he criticized religious leaders of his day while showing both his knowledge of scriptures and his grasp of social issues of his time.
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